


Redrawing Borders

by possums



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Compliant, Depression, F/M, Loveless Marriage, Sasuke is an absent husband
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:53:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29593083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possums/pseuds/possums
Summary: Sakura only wants to help people, so why can’t Sasuke be there.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke
Kudos: 24





	Redrawing Borders

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t think Sasuke and Sakura have a great marriage, and i wanted to explore that. I think fandom sometimes lacks talking about the less dramatic, unpleasant parts of relationships. 
> 
> I edited this myself— apology for errors.

Sakura returns home from a night shift at the hospital. Sarada was already asleep— and she had stopped on the way home, grabbing a meal from the convenience store. Eating this way reminded her of the painful, and sometimes lonely parts of her training— when she was working hard to try to catch up to two boys who wouldn’t wait for her. It was okay though, to have tough nights if she was helping people.

She sits at her dining room table and eats in the dim glow of a nightlight. It wasn’t that glamorous being a war hero, and she wasn’t sure if she really was as happy now as she imagined herself being when she was a student at the academy. 

She had it all though, didn't she, a wonderful daughter, a husband she loved (and had chased after for many moons) and a job that mattered. 

She had always wanted to help people. 

She ends up throwing out half of her meal, before quietly going about her night time routine, and finally softly closing her bedroom door behind her. 

She had always wanted to help people, and what did it get her, coming home with blistered fingers and an empty bed. Coming home and forgiving her husband for never being there for her, or their daughter. 

It was difficult doing it all on her own, she had tried so hard to help everyone but who had helped her? She tries to brush away the thought, it was unpleasant to fall asleep like that, especially when she had to get up early for a surgery the next morning. 

Sakura couldn’t push the thought away though, she thought with maybe a bit of envy about how her friends right now, they weren’t in bed alone. Naruto was busy, but he was there, the ‘kage office nearby. Ino had often bragged about how Sai was always home for dinner, although lately when they went out for a drink in their free time, she noticed her best friend trying not to bring up husbands at all. Had she really been so gloomy?

She had laughed once when they were out to drink. “Sasuke just needs his space. He isn’t ready yet— to settle down in the leaf.”

She wanted to help people, but why couldn’t he help her. 

She knew the answer for that though, he was suffering trauma, and she couldn’t understand it fully, he had lost everything. He had made the wrong choices and he felt like he had to atone for that. She knew he was trying to help people. 

But he was hurting her. 

She told herself that had she gone with him, had they not had Sarada she would only be holding him down anyways. And she loved being a mother, but lately there had been a small amount of resentment. Not for her child, no she loved her daughter unconditionally, but that Sasuke was the only one who couldn’t figure things out. 

The leaf had therapists for a reason. 

Sakura didn’t have the same kind of familiar trauma, she didn’t understand and she tried not to make it out to seem like she did. But Sakura understood that everyone needed to move on. Why couldn't Sasuke. What had tripped him up, was he worried nobody trusted him. If so, why wouldn’t he trust his wife. 

And lately as she laid in bed, she wondered had she ever really loved Sasuke, or had she loved something else, the projection of what she thought he was— and then the evolution to something she had to have, was her love for Sasuke about her own pride at this point, was it about how much she sacrificed. when she thought, maybe this wasn’t working— wasn’t that just a waste of her time. Was her love for Sasuke never really Sasuke at all. 

She was unhappy. 

She wanted to help everyone, so why wouldn’t he let her help him. Why wouldn’t he come home and stay— just for a week, just for a night, she needed him. 

She needed someone. 

Sakura was able to tuck her feelings away neatly before they got out of hand— she had spent many years now learning how to suppress them so as to not alarm her daughter. 

She falls asleep and she wakes up right before the sun rises, so she can get up and do it again, she was always helping people after all.


End file.
